The Four Color Media Monitor

In an interview with TMZ, actor Dean Cain, who played Superman in the Lois & Clark series from 1993-97, has taken issue with director James Gunn's new adaptation on the silver screen:

Dean Cain, who wore the red cape in "Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman," tells TMZ ... he was so excited for the new movie ... until Gunn had to break out the political Kryptonite -- and sour a portion of the fandom.

The outspoken conservative actor and occasional political commentor is pretty sure the immigrant remark controversy is enough to ding the box office returns ... but he still hopes the movie is a success. Of course, Fox News’ personalities railing against the film won't help ... such as Kellyanne Conway saying, “We don’t go to the movie theater to be lectured to" and Jesse Watters joking that "MS-13" is written on Superman's cape.

DC tells us is so frustrating as the comments from Gunn weren't even necessary ... 'cause we KNOW Superman is an immigrant -- he's a freaking alien! What's more, Superman was created in 1938 just prior to WWII breaking out ... and "Truth, Justice and the American Way" were -- and still should be -- crystal clear values.

The American Way slogan was created as far back as 1942 on radio, and years later would once in a while turn up in a few comics as well, and regrettably, by the turn of the century, not many people involved in Superman writing had much respect for it, seeing how there's been efforts made to deliberately change it, just so they can avoid bringing up "the American Way". While it's still unclear what the box office intake will be for Gunn's Superman movie, one thing is clear: the leftist political metaphors were uncalled for, and undermine the PR for promoting the film. Maybe worst of all is how anything considered a right-wing, or patriotic viewpoint today, is deemed taboo by Hollywood, and as a result, we're now saddled with yet more bad metaphors not unlike what the Black Adam movie had.

Since we're on the subject, the Smithsonian Magazine recently brought up the history of how the slogan was produced, but perhaps unshockingly, they resort to some negativity as well, stealth or otherwise:

Amid Cold War jingoism and the Red Scare, the opening narration for the 1950s television show starring George Reeves grandly announced: “Superman, who can change the course of mighty rivers, bend steel in his bare hands, and who, disguised as Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper, fights a never-ending battle for truth, justice and the American way.” The catchphrase was now firmly ingrained in world consciousness.

Over the years, in different media, the motto appeared in various forms. The 1966 “New Adventures of Superman” animated series swapped out the reference to America for “truth, justice and freedom,” an especially apt choice with the recent passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. In the 1970s, the “Super Friends” cartoon adopted the catchphrase “truth, justice and peace for all mankind,” a wholesome message for young Saturday morning viewers.

"Jingoism" in modern times was a negative slang for patriotism, and appears to originate in the 19th century. And it's shameful how the magazine resorts to that kind of propaganda, indicating where they really stand on the issue of patriotism, and even selflessness. Are they also implying the American Way's incompatible with the Civil Rights movement, and even the Voting Rights Act? That some media changed the slogan during the late 20th century may not have been forced then, but later on post-2000, that certainly became the case:

The television series “Smallville,” which followed the adventures of teen Clark Kent before his transformation into Superman, aired more than 200 episodes over ten seasons beginning in 2001. It depicts Superman’s home as the American heartland. His upbringing by good-hearted, wise and compassionate adoptive parents shapes his moral code. When Kent is running for high school president in the first season, a school reporter asks him about his platform. Unsure about his stance on the issues yet raised to do good, he responds: “I stand for truth, justice and other stuff.”

The 2006 film Superman Returns also elides the classic mantra. Superman has spent an extended five years away from Earth to search for any remains of Krypton and his otherworldly roots. Wondering if this foray into the universe has changed Superman’s ideals, Daily Planet editor in chief Perry White immediately sends out reporters to see if he still stands for “truth, justice and all that stuff.”

To much controversy, Superman renounces his American citizenship in Action Comics’ 2011 landmark 900th issue. “I’m tired of having my actions construed as instruments of U.S. policy,” he says. “‘Truth, justice and the American way’––it’s not enough anymore.” Responding to backlash, DC Comics’ co-publishers issued a statement: “Superman announces his intention to put a global focus on his never ending battle, but he remains, as always, committed to his adopted home and his roots as a Kansas farm boy from Smallville.” DC affirmed Superman as shaped by his American upbringing but firmly situated him as a citizen of the world.

Regarding Smallville, its reputation was tarnished several years ago when one of the actresses was arrested for serving as a minion to a cult that was committing sexual abuse. IIRC, there was heavy-handed liberal propaganda that turned up in the TV show too, certainly in the latter half. All that aside, interesting how even that replaced the American Way with "stuff". What does that tell about the Man of Steel's written beliefs? It doesn't clearly indicate whether he upholds positive values, that's for sure. Hmm, maybe they could've characterized him saying he upholds other "values I consider positive"? But, they didn't, and as a result, "stuff" comes off more like a joke, and hasn't aged well.

Months later, DC officially changed Superman’s motto to “truth, justice and a better tomorrow.” As DC publisher Jim Lee explained at the time, “Superman has long been a symbol of hope who inspires people from around the world, and it is that optimism and hope that powers him forward with this new mission statement.” This new mission statement plays on one of Superman’s nicknames: The Man of Tomorrow.

Here, it's entirely unmentioned that writer Tom Taylor was one of the main culprits, and a very far-left ideologue who forced LGBT propaganda upon the recently created Son of Kal-El, in the past several years. Not values that everyone around the world upholds. That aside, let's be clear. Of course it's great if and when many other people around the world who uphold tasteful values find Superman a creation to appreciate. But that doesn't mean the writers have to jettison and practically shun the American Way slogan just to make the point. And exploiting Superman's series just to serve as a platform for divisive political propaganda doesn't help. But now, look who the magazine quoted who supposedly does uphold the American Way, all for virtue-signaling:

“For me, it will always be ‘truth, justice, and the American way,’” says Brad Meltzer, a novelist and comic book author. “And I don’t think many people at DC will argue that with you. In fact, when I wrote [the children’s book] I Am Superman, I asked them if I could use ‘truth, justice and the American way.’ And everyone was completely lovely about it. In my humble opinion, I don’t think it’s as much of a fight as people keep insisting. It was just a way to add some more global accessibility. But right now, we need the ‘American way’ part—the hope, kindness and empathy that is at the core of the character—more than ever. Look around. We’re starving for Superman and his version of the American way. If you think the ‘American way’ part is about superiority, cruelty or dominance, you’re missing the whole point of Superman and comic books.”

It's disgusting how somebody quoted here who supposedly does uphold the slogan happens to be quite a leftist himself, an author who penned one of the most repellent "event" comics in DC's history, Identity Crisis, which trivialized sexual violence, and was a form of leftist political metaphor post-911. No doubt, their choice to turn to Meltzer was no accident, and quite possibly was intended to obscure his most reprehensible work. What exactly is so special about somebody like Meltzer that isn't so special about say, Mike Baron, or even the aforementioned Cain? Unfortunately, the Smithsonian's no different from most other left-wing press sources, and won't turn to a source you might not typically expect, to see what they may have to say in the slogan's favor.

That Meltzer was given the time of day they wouldn't give to somebody more conservative-leaning actually sours my milk on the new Superman movie even more. Again, I have no idea what it's box office receipts will be like, domestic or foreign. But one thing's clear. The woke obsession with building on the most tasteless leftist metaphors possible still prevails in Hollywood, and it's resulting in film productions that likely won't be discussed with much admiration in years to come, if they're even brought up at all.

Labels: dc comics, history, misogyny and racism, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, politics, Superman

A writer at Breitbart talks about how Superman can represent the importance of having children, and this was an important subject at the time of the Great Depression, around which time the Man of Steel originally debuted:

When Superman first appeared in Action Comics #1 in 1938, America wasn’t grappling with border policy or multiculturalism. It was staring down something more existential: a collapse in fertility. [...]

Superman’s origin story has been framed in recent decades as a tale of immigration. He came from another world, embraced American values, and found his place in a new society. And that’s the way James Gunn, the director of the latest Superman film, is spinning the story.

That's right, in recent times it's been described as "immigration", not prior to the 21st century. If anything, Kal-El was a refugee from a destroyed planet, and such a description could also be used for somebody who fled a volcanic island or a forest fire that destroyed homes, like the recent tragedies in Lahaina, Hawaii, and Los Angeles, California. And the columnist notes the following that Gunn told the press:

“We support ‘our people,’ we love our immigrants, and yes, Superman is an immigrant… if you don’t like that, then you are not American,” Gunn said.

But this is a retrospective overlay—a way of projecting contemporary cultural debates onto a much older and more intimate myth. A retcon, as they say in the comic book world.

Exactly. This is what's become the norm on the left in at least a decade, sadly enough, to take Superman's premise all out of context for the sake of pushing the whole platform of illegal immigration, regardless of whether the interlopers are violent or not. The hijacking of an iconic character created by Jews by ideologues who're otherwise ungrateful for conceiving the Big Blue Boy Scout in the first place, all for the sake of heavy-handed propaganda, is just sickening.

In the original 1938 telling, Clark Kent wasn’t an outsider trying to assimilate. He was a boy raised from infancy by a childless American couple, the Kents, who lived in the moral center of the country. His powers were alien, but his values were thoroughly local. He didn’t adopt American ideals later in life—he was shaped by them from his very first step.

He arrives as a baby—a foundling in the heart of Kansas. The Kents didn’t take him in to make a point about migration. They took him in because they had no children of their own—and suddenly, one was given to them. They raised him right. They taught him restraint, justice, humility. And because of their love and discipline, he became the protector of the American way of life.

This matters, because it places Superman in a different symbolic category. He is not a metaphor for migration. He is an emblem of providential arrival, of unexpected parenthood, and of the power of family formation to preserve civilization. He appears at the very moment when many Americans were quietly beginning to wonder whether the future had room for children at all. [...]

This resonates more than ever today. Fertility in the United States has fallen again—below 1.6 children per woman, far beneath the level needed to sustain population without immigration. Economists worry about shrinking workforces, collapsing entitlement ratios, and the long-term stagnation of innovation and consumption. Countries like Japan and South Korea have already entered demographic death spirals. Europe is not far behind.

America, too, is running out of children.

That’s why it’s worth recovering the original meaning of Superman. In a time when biological parenthood was slipping out of reach for many, his arrival was not political—it was redemptive.

Correct. There may have been stories featuring figures like politicians, both crooked and honest, but what was written during the Golden Age was far from overtly political in the sense that conservatives would be identified as villains, and made to look as though only they could possibly be bad. What also needs to be recovered is the more logical description of what Superman actually was - a refugee, not an immigrant. Why, what about many Holocust survivors who were lucky to flee the National Socialists and make it to countries where it was safer? Those are also refugees, and whether they sought citizenship in other countries they reached, that doesn't contradict what they were when they fled the Nazis. Oddly enough, the Jerusalem Post, when they brought this up, almost correctly acknowledged this, but then immediately contradicted themselves:

While pundits on Fox News dubbed the movie “Superwoke,” historians note that Clark Kent’s journey has always mirrored that of Jewish refugees in the 20th century. Here are five facts that put the debate in perspective.

1. Gunn’s reboot leans into the immigrant theme

In an interview with The Times of London, Gunn said his movie is “about how basic human kindness is a value we’ve lost” and framed Superman as an immigrant who embodies that ideal.

Wow, they sure knew how to screw things up, all for the sake of their own leftist politics, as their jab at Fox News indicates. Which explains why I haven't had much respect for such a paper in years. So they raise the refugee theme, and come to think of it, based on their anti-Fox News bias, practically hollow out the point even before the part where they normalize the immigration propaganda. For shame.

Anyway, since we're still on the subject, here's another review from the Times of Israel, and 2 things I think I'll comment on:

But do the character’s Jewish roots or actor Corenswet’s background factor into the storytelling in this new adventure? No, not really. There aren’t any subtle winks that I picked up on, which was a smidge disappointing, but perhaps to be expected. There are, however, ample parallels to important current events.

Superman is, of course, American pop culture’s most famous immigrant, and the US government’s distrust of him is a constant source of conflict. The film’s release just a week or so after US Congress passed Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” packed with a $100 billion increase in spending for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, is a coincidence that could not be more fitting. The movie’s perspective is far from subtle in rejecting the Trump position.

The plot of “Superman” begins when (off-screen) the Man of Steel prevents the somewhat Russian-like nation of Boravia from invading the somewhat Pakistani or maybe Iranian-like nation of Jarhanpur. Even though Boravia is technically a US ally — and Superman’s loyalty is to the nation that adopted him — he uses his interventionist might to prevent the hostile action. He bashes tanks, harming no one, but saves lives. Sure, he admits, the Jarhanpur nation has never been the best friend to the United States, and the Boravian propaganda machine said they hoped to liberate the county from rotten leaders, but innocent people were going to die — and the government was going to let it happen.

Well, I guess that says all you need to know what's going wrong with this picture. Whether or not Trump was the intended target of the filmmakers, it's certainly an assault on conservatives' politics. As for lack of allusion to the Jewish roots of Superman's creation, should it be any surprise a film produced by a man who once made offensive remarks about the Holocaust may not have anything of the sort written up in the screenplay? Why, what if the invading army was a metaphor for Israel's military warring against the Hamas in the Gaza strip following October 7, 2023? Shudder.

Now, here's an Indiewire review, which, unlike the prior example, is negative:

On the one hand, Superman is an undocumented immigrant who becomes a scapegoat for all America’s problems, and his nemesis — played by Nicholas Hoult, who transforms a dull villain role with a touch of the blinkered sociopathy he perfected on “The Great” — is a billionaire technocrat who doesn’t trust that anyone so powerful could ever be pure at heart, and publicly accuses Superman of “grooming us.” On the other hand, Lex Luthor creates an intra-dimensional pocket universe to jail his ex-girlfriends and manipulates public opinion with an army of enslaved monkeys who blast anti-Superman propaganda onto social media. (It should be funny how brainless the masses are in this movie, but Gunn’s irreverent streak runs dry whenever his “Superman” threatens to brush up against satire.)

One of the film’s interlaced but awkwardly layered plots finds a trio of corporate metahumans (“The Justice Gang”) fighting to contain an adorable baby kaiju as it stomps around Metropolis. Another of them hinges on a lopsided conflict between a cosmopolitan empire and its Middle Eastern neighbor, the former supplied with cutting-edge technology by interested parties, while the latter is in danger of being wiped off the map.

Wow, the way that's set up makes it sound like Superman's supposed to be a stand-in for a leftist accused of supporting child abuse like transsexual surgeries, while what Luthor is written doing with gal pals sounds like a stealth assault on Trump, accusing him of doing nothing but bad to his ladyfriends. Good grief, what's the world coming to? And the metaphor for the USA (and Israel) is made to look like the advocates of barbarism, and we're supposed to believe Islamofascists couldn't possibly do anything horrific to women and children? These reviews, for now, are decidedly enough to explain why I'd rather not spend money at the movie theater anymore for blockbusters, because they long degenerated into political pandering of the worst kind. Something even Zack Snyder's films did.

I have no idea what the box office intake for Gunn's Superman film will be. If filmmakers wish to draw from cartoony ideas like anthropomorphic dogs and monkeys, that's okay, but the kind of political metaphors and allusions employed in this movie are exactly what sink even the ability to appreciate that much. It's honestly time for Hollywood to move away from so much reliance on pop culture products like Saturday morning cartoons and try more drama instead. And to show a willingness to discuss the history of say, Betty Mahmoody, once the subject of the film Not Without My Daughter in 1991, but who in Tinseltown would truly be willing to explore such history now? There's just so much gone wrong with entertainment, it'd take an epoch until it could be tidied up.

Update: Breitbart reports James Gunn retracted his previous statements where he insulted half the country. But it's coming awfully late now, and I for one long grew weary of superhero movies, as mentioned before.

Labels: dc comics, Europe and Asia, golden calf of LGBT, history, islam and jihad, misogyny and racism, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, politics, Superman, terrorism

Flickering Myth's posted more preview pages from Marvel's new take on the swimsuit specials of the early to mid-90s, and unsurprisingly, it appears to begin with standard panel-style story pages, and if I notice correctly, even features the new take on Bucky Barnes that was introduced nearly 2 decades ago? And certainly does feature potential allusions to Al Ewing's aforementioned storyline. If Bucky had to be included in such a story, it should've been in a way more faithful to his original renditions in the Golden Age, if only because I don't consider the newer renditions of the past 20 years to be plausible at all.

Next, in another related article, Screen Rant talks about how this special may be allegedly commenting on the issue of AI employment, which appears to have been used by Roxxon in the tale for copying Captain America:

Steve Rogers is rightfully the most offended of them all and the first to point out that the use of his image, as well as the others, was unauthorized. However, this is not just a comedic angle or a chance to show off superheroes in skimpy bathing suits. It’s a real-life problem faced by creators today, especially those in the comic industry.

The premise of Marvel Swimsuit Special #1 is particularly striking given the real-world context of AI in art. Marvel, like many other publishers, has publicly stated its opposition to the use of AI-generated art in its publications. This storyline, therefore, represents a bold move, directly confronting a sensitive issue that resonates deeply within the artistic community and among fans. It poses questions about intellectual property, artistic integrity, and the potential for AI to be misused for commercial gain or to misrepresent individuals.

The decision to integrate this AI controversy under the pretense of a deepfake swimsuit special is an intriguing choice. Swimsuit issues are often seen as lighthearted and fan-service oriented. By injecting a serious and timely debate about AI into such a context, Marvel may be aiming to draw attention to the widespread issue, suggesting that AI's influence can seep into even the most unexpected corners.

Honestly, is it that necessary to inject commentary about AI into the mix? It could be argued it diminishes the whole premise of the swimsuit specials, which 3 decades ago was simply to set up a simple stand-alone premise of superheroes traveling to a few odd locations where they'd relax in bathing suits, and give various artists the chance to show off their talents in the context. They weren't meant to serve as quasi-political statement years before.

I'll say that the artists whose "splash pages" I've seen so far do exhibit talent, but something tells me their art would be better off if obtained separate from the new swimsuit special rather than buying the whole thing. And it's naive to think Marvel's staff are going to mend their MO that quickly. If they really wanted to prove themselves, they would've left the AI commentary out of the special altogether. And won't include any of the PC creations they've turned out over the past 15 years.

Labels: good artists, history, marvel comics, msm propaganda, technology, women of marvel

The TV show on Netflix based on the disgraced Neil Gaiman's Sandman comics series draws to a close, and as could surely expected, there's more op-ed writers who've vented their observations on both the TV adaptation, and the Gaiman sexual abuse scandal that precipitated its ending. For example, here's what a writer at Comic Book Club Live had to say, and while there are some interesting points to be made, they're damaged when the columnist follows the poor example of those who've dragged J.K. Rowling into the mess for the millionth time. First, let's take a look at the following points he ostensibly makes:

This is not a review of Netflix’s The Sandman, which premieres the first half of its second and final season tomorrow morning (July 3). Reviews are embargoed until the episodes launch on Netflix anyway, so I wouldn’t bother posting a review of something that is free and available to watch. But this is a discussion about how The Sandman, which was once one of the most eagerly anticipated adaptations of all time, is now near impossible to watch… We often discuss the need to separate the art from the artist, but you just can’t separate Neil Gaiman and his reported abusive actions towards women from his self-insert character, Morpheus. What should be a must-watch is now physically painful to even look at.

And the most jarring violence from the comics wasn't painful to look at over 30 years ago? I think there's room for improvement here, but trouble is, he's not making any. And then, he dampens what impact this column might've had with the following:

“Weird,” perhaps, isn’t the word I would use. But what Goyer notes here is the core of the internal conflict that wracks anyone who is tainted by a terrible man like Gaiman: hundreds of other people’s work are financially and artistically impacted by one man’s deeds. The cast, the crew, the producers, they were just there doing their jobs. And to not release the show like Goyer notes means they won’t be fully compensated, and won’t have their work seen.

But! There’s the added issue of whether Gaiman also gets financially compensated by the release of The Sandman, and the answer is: likely, yes, he does. In that case, does that money go towards fueling lawsuits he can use against the women he reportedly abused? That’s certainly the sort of path people can draw between, say, a J.K. Rowling and buying Harry Potter merchandise: she uses that money to harm and attack trans people all over the world.

Seems we have another somebody here who's obscuring Rowling's own terrible experience with sexual assault, and those who've pretended it never happened put their sincerity in doubt. So, how can we be convinced those who claim they're disgusted by Gaiman's real life offenses are on the level if they won't acknowledge Rowling has moral authority to speak on these issues?

In the following article, Pajiba's writer had the audacity to make a point realists shouldn't put money in Gaiman's pockets by tuning in, and thankfully, in contrast to Comic Book Club, she doesn't drag Rowling into the subject:

A strange footnote to the extensive coverage of the allegations over the past year has been the impact it had on Hollywood, where studios had multiple adaptations of Gaiman’s works in development. Some projects were cancelled outright, while others are proceeding in truncated form. One such project is Netflix’s The Sandman, which will launch its second and final season on July 3, and the promotion has been fascinating to behold. Discussions of the show itself are taking a backseat to the “But Why?” of it all. Why release the show at all? Why perpetuate the work of this man after everything we’ve learned, and continue to put money in his pocket? [...]

The pipeline of Gaiman adaptations is drying up, with the last few projects readying for release. From here, the question shifts to the fans and viewers in general: Will you watch? I don’t begrudge anyone their clear moral compass, but I also appreciate the new life art takes when it is shared amongst collaborators and audiences alike. It no longer belongs to any one author, or asshole. So like the studios, I’m going to decide on a case-by-case basis. Just as Amazon is seeking a return on their existing investment in Good Omens, so am I, for my time as a viewer. Kicking out Gaiman and doing a single long wrap-up episode seems like a fair resolution to me, and I’ll tune in. If they decide to air Anansi Boys, I won’t be mad at it. It would be a shame for the hard work of the artists to sit on a shelf, but I probably won’t watch because I don’t have a similar investment. We’re all making these calculations as consumers all the time, between our personal satisfaction and the message we want to send the industry about its choice of projects in the future, and there is no right answer. I just hope all our personal choices net out to the same result: Gaiman continuing his slide into obscurity.

This holds up better since she wisely refrains from bringing Rowling into the topic, which would only result in contradictions. But, there's just no use tuning in to anything credited solely to Gaiman as the author, because who knows if it'll finance his wallet? Again, that's something anybody who's a realist just shouldn't do. Even TV shows can turn profits, and if an author turns out to be a bad lot, that's why even a TV production's not something you should give a monetary boost to.

That having been noted, there have been some negative reviews of this 2nd season turning up, and the AV Club says the show is little more than tedious cosplay. It also notes, interestingly enough:

DC Comics’ The Sandman, written by Neil Gaiman, was a groundbreaking and surreal series. However, the Netflix adaptation remains content to paint by the numbers. Superhero movies often take inspiration from their source material, but the better ones usually avoid directly translating stories to the screen word-for-word or panel-for-panel. As a TV show, The Sandman struggles to exceed or even match the original’s stunning visual landscape, and its characters often feel like unimaginative cosplayers reciting Gaiman’s dialogue.

Now isn't this fascinating they bring up how Gaiman's story did fall into the category of "surreal". There have been all sorts of PC advocates over the years who've lectured everybody else that if a story is "realistic", this literally makes it "good". But here, somebody else is claiming the Sandman comics were great because they were surreal, which can mean unrealistic, though also dreamlike and fantastical (which Gaiman's story is definitely not. It's more like a nightmare). That's why a vital point must be made that neither realism nor surrealism alone make an entertainment product wonderful and praiseworthy. It's how talented and meritous the writing/acting in the finished product is that does. So I think it's time these commentators admitted that just because the original comics were jarringly violent doesn't instantly make it a classic.

According to the Mirror US, the show's 2nd and last season has been panned widely:

Many fans have admitted feeling conflicted over continuing the series, which features Tom Sturridge as Lord Morpheus, aka Dream, despite a positive response to the first season.

Now the follow-up has been released on Netflix today (Thursday, June 3), reviews are in and some critics are warning subscribers not to bother with the next chapter of Dream’s adventures.

Whether the sexual abuse scandal had any effect on the proceedings, it makes little difference; the whole comic was so pretentious to begin with, and built on the kind of political allusions and metaphors that became a sad staple of the past decade, that it's little wonder it hasn't aged well. And I'm not forgetting how offensive issues 6-7 were either. Interestingly, according to Polygon, a "major" story arc, that being the one titled "A Game of You", was omitted from what was filmed for the screen. Seeing how that itself was a dreadful metaphor for LGBT propaganda, that's why it's pretty amazing if they did decide to jettison the whole story segment.

Now, here's a writer at Salon who also thought the Netflix show ended badly, and the following description of a storyline there is certainly eyebrow raising, viewed in the context of what we've since learned about Gaiman:

The lord of dreams is very sorry to have put a woman through hell. We’re not talking about a figurative Hell, either. Dream, the eternally brooding namesake hero of “The Sandman” (portrayed by Tom Sturridge), condemned his great love Nada (Umulisa Gahiga) to the Infernal plane out of spite.

Nada may have been queen of a great and ancient African civilization, but Dream is one of the Endless. From her perspective, all-powerful cosmic beings have no business wifing up with mortals. A random asteroid wiping out her kingdom soon after she accepts Dream’s marriage proposal only proves her point.

But instead of giving grace to the woman he loves, Dream takes such offense at the thought that Nada would choose Hell over an eternity at his side that he sends her straight to the hot place, and not for days or months. She’s trapped there for millennia.

Regrets? Ten thousand years later, Dream has a few. When he finally comes face to face with Nada again, the most he can offer his ex, at first, is, “I think perhaps I should apologize.”

There’s a cheesy old movie quote declaring that love means never having to say you’re sorry. Mealymouthed half-measures like Dream’s show us why that’s a lie. Condemning someone to starve, burn, freeze and ache for ages out of arrogance deserves a definitive “sorry” that should kick off a penance marathon. Hence, we get why the lady finds her ex’s gesture a tad underwhelming. Nada reminds Dream that she endured nonstop torture and wept and waited, all because of him. “And you think, perhaps, you should apologize,” she retorts.

Dream, an all-powerful being who can shape reality to his will, has a real problem with admitting wrongdoing. When he deceives his sister Delirium (Esmé Creed-Miles), he’d rather keep the resulting rift open than go after her and apologize. When he brings death to another god’s door, any attempts at making amends are weak or simply too late.

“I will live with eternal regret for what I did to you,” he assures Nada, as if an all-powerful being’s regret has value next to more than 100 human lifetimes of torment.

Alas, as Gaiman has since proven in real life, he's anything but remorseful. Indiewire's also panning it for the same reasons, perhaps even the 1st season:

In Season 2, Volume 1, Dream learns how to better empathize with humans (and his siblings, aka the Endless, which are personified forces of nature more powerful than gods). But in doing so, he also struggles to recognize his own fallibility — such as that time he confused love for “desire” and ended up banishing a woman to Hell for 10,000 years. Past mistakes like this one invite reality-invoking questions of consent and manipulation, while a fixed focus on Dream’s absent compassion calls to mind Gaiman’s continued denials of any wrongdoing and the legal action he filed against women accusing him of sexual misconduct. Ostensibly, Dream is slowly coming to realize even the Endless can change — that he, too, may care about people — but the evidence is so scant, so vague, and so hollow, it’s all but impossible to separate the art from the artist, even if you can stay awake long enough to try.

When you realize the TV show, as much as the comics themselves, are more like some bizarre attempt by the author to obscure his own wrongdoings, that's why it all collapses into the dust, or sand. No doubt, years from now, all this stuff will be forgotten to the winds of time, since its author proved a mere fraud, and little else. I just hope none of this will make it difficult to sell reprints of the real Sandman, Wesley Dodds, who'd been created in the Golden Age by Gardner Fox. The classic comics from nearly a century ago are what everybody should look for, not the overrated modern mishmash written by a pretentious modern scribe who's now coming to be seen as the phony he truly was.

Labels: dc comics, golden calf of LGBT, history, misogyny and racism, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, politics, violence

On the eve of the new Superman movie starring David Corenswet, filmmaker James Gunn was interviewed by the UK Times (via Breitbart), and much like earlier, he still alludes to his political positions in a way that's little more than a turnoff:

One way to do that is with a ten-minute scene that just features Clark and Lois talking about geopolitics and whether Superman should have stopped a war. It’s exactly how to make a superhero movie to engage adults. “It is definitely the most unusual thing that we put in the movie,” Gunn says. This is a Superman film for the age of endless discourse, with the difference being that the people — Clark and Lois — who disagree with each other here are willing to discuss and even, perhaps, learn.

“Yes, it’s about politics,” Gunn says. “But on another level it’s about morality. Do you never kill no matter what — which is what Superman believes — or do you have some balance, as Lois believes? It’s really about their relationship and the way different opinions on basic moral beliefs can tear two people apart.

[...] So yes, some fans will simply like the film for the huge fights, the sidekicks and Superdog. Plus, the humour, so often missing from Superman films — this Superman is playful: he enjoys his job. Yet the film is coming out during a summer of protests in the US about President Trump’s plans for, and rhetoric about, immigrants, which is jolting given that Superman makes clear that he is a refugee from another place who came to the US.

And before you say, “Superman has gone woke!” this is all in Superman’s lengthy history. Superman was written by men from immigrant families and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees once released a book in Italy titled Superman Was a Refugee Too. Less than ten years ago DC Comics backed World Refugee Day: “The Man of Steel’s story is the ultimate example of a refugee who makes his new home better.” In the edition of Action Comics No 987, Superman saves a group of undocumented workers from a violent racist.

Fascinatingly enough, that issue was written by an alleged "conservative", Dan Jurgens. But assuming he truly is, it just goes to show right-wingers can do bad things too, like act as apologists for bad ideologies and even criminals and terrorists who cross borders illegally, and, despite what's being told here, aren't "refugees". Something the article, despite any indication to the contrary, only confusingly brings up, and doesn't actually make clear distinctions about. It's not hard to guess the interviewer wants to base all this upon his own leftist politics to boot. Siegel and Shuster's families were either legal immigrants, or they were refugees from places like communist USSR. How come that isn't explored? It's shameful how they obscure how immigrants, legal or not, can do bad things, and then we're supposed to believe these "undocumented" workers shouldn't even have any kind of legal papers?!? It all goes to show how far morality's fallen, and how today's left-wing commentators refuse to recognize the distinctions between science fiction protagonists and real life antagonists. Also worth remembering is that in Superman's origin, Kal-El was but an infant when his spacecraft flew to earth and the USA, where he was found by the Kents in Smallville, who raised him to embrace positive values. The violent foreign felons are mainly adults, and badly educated/indoctrinated ones at that. Gunn continues the obfuscation of Superman's premise in the following:

“I mean, Superman is the story of America,” Gunn says. “An immigrant that came from other places and populated the country, but for me it is mostly a story that says basic human kindness is a value and is something we have lost.” I ask if he has considered how differently the film might play in say, blue state New York — aka Metropolis — and Kansas, where Kent grew up? “Yes, it plays differently,” Gunn admits. “But it’s about human kindness and obviously there will be jerks out there who are just not kind and will take it as offensive just because it is about kindness. But screw them.”

Before we go on it should be said that Gunn has a history with Trump. In 2018, after Gunn’s public criticisms of the president, which included a sexually vulgar joke and comparisons with Hitler and Putin, the right-wing commentator Mike Cernovich pulled up social media jokes by Gunn about paedophilia and the Holocaust, which led to a social media campaign against him. Gunn apologised, but under pressure Disney, his employer at the time, fired him before further pressure led it to reinstate him — then he went off to join DC.

There is a scene in the new Superman with Luthor’s monkeys trolling away at screens. Was that, I ask Gunn, alluding to what happened to him? “I don’t think so,” he says, grinning. “It’s not really about me, but people in general driven by rage or the bots governments pay for that create all sorts of nonsense.

“This Superman does seem to come at a particular time when people are feeling a loss of hope in other people’s goodness,” Gunn adds. “I’m telling a story about a guy who is uniquely good, and that feels needed now because there is a meanness that has emerged due to cultural figures being mean online.”

He laughs. “And I include myself in this. It is ad infinitum, millions of people having tantrums online. How are we supposed to get anywhere as a culture? We don’t know what’s real, and that is a really difficult place for the human brain to be. If I could press a button to make the internet disappear I’d consider it. And, no, I don’t make films to change the world, but if a few people could be just a bit nicer after this it would make me happy.”

Well I'm sorry, but this does nothing to alleviate concerns the film's entertainment value will be damaged. This kind of idiocy is exactly what filmmakers need to avoid. Of course every fandom has bad apples in it who need to be condemned. Some of said apples likely aren't even fans to begin with. But these ideologues never make a clear case, let alone distinctions, and that's what could go wrong with this film. As could the following to boot:

He is incredulous about this, almost delirious, which feels like a decent time to raise a topic he might want to skirt away from: the fictional countries of Barovia and Jarhanpur in the film. Barovia, armed to the absolute teeth, ploughs into the rather unfortified Jarhanpur, which appears to be a Middle Eastern state. The Barovians seem to want to kill everyone in sight.

Which countries, I ask Gunn, does he think viewers will believe are being alluded to here? “Oh, I really don’t know,” he says, quickly. “But when I wrote this the Middle Eastern conflict wasn’t happening. So I tried to do little things to move it away from that, but it doesn’t have anything to do with the Middle East. It’s an invasion by a much more powerful country run by a despot into a country that’s problematic in terms of its political history, but has totally no defence against the other country. It really is fictional.”

Be that as it may, it's sadly possible this is little more than an allusion to the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and while the former may not have been as dangerous as Iran was with their nuclear labs, and missiles they fired at Israel - exactly the reason why the IDF had to destroy much of their infrastructure in the past month - that doesn't mean even those specific autocracies are any more acceptable. Of course, depending how you view this, it's also possible Gunn wrote up a metaphor for Israel around the time of October 7, 2023, and his repellent jokes about the Holocaust certainly do nothing to alleviate the concern he could've written a very revolting metaphor here too, as bad as the Black Adam movie's was. Even if Gunn apologized for his social media postings, what he said is still very horrific, and one can argue whether it was a good idea for the interviewer to bring that up. Because what if such history does have a negative effect on the film's box office performance?

But, for all we know, the new Superman film might see a significant box office intake after all. That doesn't mean I want to finance it on my tab, and whatever its financial outlook, there's no telling if film buffs will be referencing it fondly in years to come. What is apparent for now is that more left-wing ideologues are hijacking the Man of Steel to serve their shoddy platforms, and tomorrow, they'll most likely be hijacking Starfire's premise in the New Teen Titans as well. All without even acknowledging the differences between fiction and reality, and why immigrants and refugees in reality aren't saints. This exploitation of the Man of Steel and other similar characters for justifying modern leftist politics has got to stop.

Labels: dc comics, Europe and Asia, history, islam and jihad, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, politics, Superman, terrorism, violence

With the new Superman movie soon to open in the coming week, the BBC opportunistically produced a report where they make it sound bizarrely like the Golden Age renditions of Superman literally potray him as a "socialist":

Returning to cinemas next week, the superhero may be known as the ultimate all-American Mr Nice Guy – but, back in the 1930s, he didn't begin that way.

James Gunn's new Superman film will be flying into cinemas next week, but ever since the first trailers were released, superhero fans have been having online debates about whether the Man of Steel played by David Corenswet is true to the one in the comics. Is he too gloomy? Is he too woke? Should he still be wearing red swimming trunks over his blue tights? Underlying these debates is an agreement that a few details are non-negotiable: Superman should be faster than a speeding bullet and more powerful than a locomotive. He should come from the planet Krypton and live in a city called Metropolis. And he should be in love with Lois Lane. Beyond that, he should also be noble and wholesome – and perhaps a bit of a bore. While the likes of Batman and Wolverine are popular because they break the rules, Superman has to be a law-abiding, upstanding all-American Mr Nice Guy.

But that hasn't always been the case. The first Superman strips were written by Jerry Siegel, drawn by Joe Shuster, and published in Action Comics magazine in 1938 by DC (or National Allied, as the company was then called). And in those, he was a far more unruly, and in some ways far more modern character. He was "a head-bashing Superman who took no prisoners, who made his own law and enforced it with his fists, who gleefully intimidated his foes with a wicked grin and a baleful glare", says Mark Waid, a comics writer and historian, in his introduction to a volume of classic Action Comics reprints. "He was no super-cop. He was a super-anarchist." If this rowdy and rebellious Superman were introduced today, he'd be hailed as one of the most subversive superheroes around.

"I had no idea the character was like that until I started writing my book," says Paul S Hirsch, author of Pulp Empire: A Secret History of Comic Book Imperialism. "But it blew my mind when I saw it. He's essentially a violent socialist." The earliest issues of Action Comics bear out this assessment. When there are wrongs to be righted, Superman knocks down doors and dangles suspects from fifth-storey windows, and he makes hearty jokes while he's doing so: "See how easily I crush your watch in my palm? I'll give your neck the same treatment!"

Some of the people who are roughed up by this boisterous outlaw are pistol-packing racketeers, but usually they are a less glamorous brand of villain – a domestic abuser, an orphanage superintendent who is cruel to children – and the majority are so wealthy that they don't need to rob banks: there is the mine owner who skimps on safety measures, the construction magnate who sabotages a competitor's buildings, the politician who buys a newspaper in order to turn it into a propaganda sheet. Rather than being a typical costumed crime-fighter, then, the Superman of 1938 was a left-wing revolutionary.

Oh for heaven's sake. Are they saying a capitalist couldn't and wouldn't take the same damning approach to violent villains, no matter their financial status? This is one of the most disgusting excuses for hijacking other people's creations just to claim an icon as "theirs", and possibly to discourage right-wingers from being fans of the Man of Steel. I should note that, as somebody who owns some Golden Age archives, there were gangsters in various stories that could be considered anything but millionaires too, and a lot of Golden Age stories with other superheroes featured mafia-style crooks as the antagonists too. So where does this Hirsch get off making it sound like socialists are saints, or something like that? It should be noted Harvey Weinstein is left-wing, and he turned out to be just the kind of wealthy villain Superman could be depicted taking on. Also note how the article is so ambiguous on whether the villains can actually be considered wealthy in every sense, when racketeers are anything but that, no matter how much money the fleece off the innocent. And there have been cases of apartment landlords at the time who abused the well-being of their tenants, though simultaneously, New York's rent control laws also caused damage regardless. It's insulting to the intellect how they make it sound like nobody's aware wealthy can be just as corrupt as anybody poorer. That's talking down to the audience, but no surprise the BBC could do that.

What they miss is that, what Superman was depicted doing in some stories wasn't all that different from what even the Punisher could've later been seen doing, and even Daredevil, save for that Superman even back then usually didn't kill. And worst of all, what they obscure is that Superman, just like those characters, was and still is a vigilante, violent or otherwise. Even Spider-Man could be described that way. The difference is that Superman's angle was more on the bright/optimistic side, as was Spidey's. So, how did it get to a point where these hack writers want everyone to believe the Man of Steel, in the early tales, was solely a socialist? And are they implying he wasn't all that different in rendition than what he'd been written fighting soon enough during WW2? Or wasn't all that different from Lenin and Stalin? Well, knowing how mendacious the BBC could be for many years, this is no surprise. This is just another regurgitation of the old "superheroes are fascists" smear that even Fredric Wertham may have been guilty of precipitating.

Something to ponder: even Batman could've been depicted dangling felons out windows, as could the Punisher, and nobody calls them socialists the way Superman's being embarrassed with this puff piece. And of course, the oxymoron is that the same people calling Supes a left-wing revolutionary have no love for the Punisher, no matter the angles involved. Why do they make it sound like superheroes with super-strength never put it to use as a warning to violent felons? And then:

"I absolutely love those old issues," Matthew K Manning, the writer of Superman: The Ultimate Guide and John Carpenter's Tales of Science Fiction, tells the BBC. "They're clearly the work of young people frustrated with the injustices of the world, and rightfully so. Keep in mind, these were two Jewish men reaching adulthood just before the start of World War Two. There was plenty to be angry about. And suddenly they had this character who could give a voice to their concerns and hold the corrupt accountable."

What's really irritating is how they run the gauntlet of putting Siegel/Shuster in the same boat as Germany's National Socialists, or even Russia's communists, implying that Jewish-Americans weren't all that different in any way from the socialists of eastern Europe. And don't they realize communists brutalized dissidents and threw them in the Gulag in the USSR? Even Jewish inhabitants of eastern Europe were victims of this. The obfuscation of these historical topics is shameful.

Not that Siegel and Shuster were the only comics professionals with such liberal views. "The comic-book industry was founded largely by people barred from work in more legitimate fields," Hirsch explains to the BBC, "because they were Jewish, they were immigrants, they were people of colour, they were women. It was a creative ghetto where a lot of very talented people ended up because they weren't able to get a Madison Avenue advertising job, and they couldn't write for Life Magazine. A lot of those people were radical – or at least not mainstream – and DC was founded by men who very much fit that mould: men who were recent immigrants, men who had leftist sympathies from growing up in New York City at that time."

Ah, and here, they're hinting at their own left-wing positions from a modern perspective, which they must be trying to apply to figures from the past as well in the same twisted logic. Well that's shameful, and besides, I don't recall any stories from the Golden Age that made it sound like everybody should literally be given free money and not work at all for a living.

All the same, few comic characters were as militant as Superman. In one early issue, he demolishes a row of slum homes in order to force the authorities to build better housing (a risky strategy, that one). In another, he takes on the city's gambling industry because it is bankrupting addicts. And in another, he declares war on everyone he sees as being responsible for traffic-related deaths. He terrifies reckless drivers, he abducts the mayor who hasn't enforced traffic laws, he smashes up the stock of a second-hand car dealer, and he wrecks a factory where faulty cars are assembled. "It's because you use inferior metals and parts so as to make higher profits at the cost of human lives," he informs the owner. Were Superman's direct-action protest campaigns strictly legal? No, but they were riotous, boldly political fun – and almost 90 years on, they stand as a fascinating street-level account of US urban life in the 1930s.

While I don't deny the notion of demolishing slums straight off the bat doesn't come without question, I do wonder why they make gambling dens sound so benign - even today, there's gambling dens run by mafia and loan sharks, and they can be very dangerous to anybody foolish enough to waste money at their joints. My own family had a relative or two in past decades who were threatened by organized syndicates because they gambled stupidly at their shoddy grottos. It was a stupid thing to do, but that doesn't excuse that these gangsters did something bad, all over mere money. Do violent felons deserve to run gambling dens without opposition? Nope. Such dens in themselves are a form of socialism in disguise. And why should we care if there's a story where Supes tears down a gangster's grotto because they're luring people in to lose money and face death threats if they don't pay up? Also, he wasn't depicted tearing down the slum houses so they could be rebuilt to house the kind of illegal immigrants who turned the USA and Europe into a horror story. He was depicted doing it, if anything, for the folks who already lived in that neighborhood, including the delinquents he was speaking to.

All too soon, however, Superman turned his attention to mad scientists and giant monsters, and away from Metropolis's under-privileged masses. After a handful of issues, his "opponents were all larger than life, and while that made for exciting comics, his days of social crusading were becoming a thing of the past", writes Waid.

Umm, I think even after this "brief period" as they describe it, there were still plenty of stories for a time where rank-and-file gangsters were adversaries, but in any event, what they claim about the early issues is definitely exaggerated and blatant.

What was the Kryptonite that sapped Superman's social conscience? Hirsch argues that it was a compound of two elements. One was the "blandification" that occurs when the sales of any commercial property go up, up and away. "Superman is unbelievably popular from the moment they get the sales numbers for the first issue," he says. "So they suddenly realise what they have on their hands, and they don't want to jeopardise it. Jack Liebowitz, the president of DC, sees that they can sell Superman pillowcases and pyjamas – but if Superman's running around throwing people out of windows and threatening to wrap iron bars around their necks, it isn't going to work."

Alongside that familiar story of a big star selling out, "the ultimate thing that ends Superman's radical streak is the beginning of the war", says Hirsch. "All of the immigrant and non-white people who were working in this industry, they wanted to be seen as patriotic. And it makes sense. That's what you had to do to fit in. And even more nuts-and-bolts, that's what you had to do to get your paper ration [for printing magazines]. If you were doing things that bothered the government in 1941, maybe you wouldn't get your wood pulp."

I think Mr. Hirsch is implying patriotism is wrong. No surprise there, of course, coming from the BBC. Many Jewish movements at the time campaigned for the USA to help fight against Germany's National Socialist-led military monsters, and they're obfuscating even that much for the sake of their shoddy claim the early Superman tales echoed "socialism"? What a fraud indeed. I will not buy his books if I can help it. Something that was obscured in all this mess is that, IIRC, Jerry Siegel was interviewed by the BBC in 1981 and told them he fully supported the "truth, justice and the American way" slogan that was first featured in radio broadcasts in the early 40s. That's not exactly something you see today's Chomskyites upholding, is it?

Anyway, to think much of comicdom, no matter the political standings of its contributors, would've been produced all so that modern ideologues like those contributing to the BBC could exploit them just to limit everything to their own narrow beliefs, it's just devastating. And it goes without saying that, the would-be historians they interviewed don't deserve to own any comics like these if all they can think of doing is taking them way out of context with exaggerated claims just to justify their own narrow visions. All they're doing is insulting the memory of fine folks like Siegel and Shuster, who, while they obviously weren't saints, neither were they the kind of far-left communists this puff piece runs the risk of making them sound like.

Labels: dc comics, good artists, good writers, history, misogyny and racism, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, politics, Superman, violence

Wargamer reports that Diamond Distribution, already in serious bankruptcy quicksand, plans to sell off inventory coming from RPG publishers like Paizo sans compensation, which could damage the RPG publishers' finances:

Diamond Comic Distributors, a recently bankrupted company that distributed RPG books for companies like Paizo, Wizards of the Coast, and other third-party D&D and Pathfinder publishers, has asked the bankruptcy court to allow it to liquidate its remaining consignment inventory. Essentially, this would mean that Diamond Comic Distributors can sell the comics, books, and RPG products still in its warehouses in order to pay off its creditors - all without giving a penny to the original publishers.

Retail consignment is when goods are sent to a second party who facilitates their sale in exchange for a cut of the profits. Legal ownership remains with the sender (consignor), but the recipient (consignee) is responsible for storing and selling the stock. This is how tabletop RPG publishers like Paizo ended up with some of their stock still in Diamond Comic Distributors' hands when it filed for bankruptcy on January 14, 2025.

Diamond Comic Distributors filed a motion to sell its consigned inventory "free and clear of liens, claims, interests, or encumbrances" on June 25. 128 companies are listed as having consignment inventory housed with Diamond Comic Distributors. This includes comic book giants like DC and Image Comics, as well as four TTRPG publishers: Paizo, Goodman Games, Roll for Combat, and Green Ronin.

According to Roll for Combat owner Stephen Glicker, this means "they are going to take all the inventory that they have currently in their warehouse, and Diamond is going to liquidate it and keep all the profits." Glicker explains in a YouTube video from July 1 (see above) that Roll for Combat was notified about these plans last week.

"I couldn't believe it when I read this, and I spoke to my attorney", Glicker continues. "He looked it over, and his exact quote to me was 'It's not as bad as you think it is; it's much worse.'"

Glicker explains that not only will Roll For Combat lose revenue from the sale of those books, they'll also potentially lose money from having to compete with themselves if Diamond decides to sell Roll For Combat products for a more competitive price.

Wargamer asked Roll For Combat what potential losses it could face, and Stephen Glicker estimates losses of "approximately $50,000 in potential profit if everything in inventory was sold and we received payment from Diamond." "However, they currently have approximately $120,000 worth of our product in their warehouse", Glicker tells Wargamer.

According to ICv2, a hearing will take place on July 21 to give vendors time to object to the motion. Wargamer has reached out to Diamond Distributors to confirm the date of the hearing, but is yet to receive a response.

Despite the hearing, Glicker doesn't seem optimistic about Goodman Games' chances to change the situation. "The bankruptcy law is really not in my favor", he says in the YouTube video. "They actually have the right to take products that they don't own and sell them at any price they want - basically liquidate them - and then keep all the profits for themselves and use that money to pay off the banks and to pay off the bankruptcy debt."

Somehow, based on all that was told about Diamond in the past, it doesn't sound too surprising if they're trying to short-change publishers while on their last legs. This actually makes clear why it was for the best that publishers stopped relying solely on Diamond, and shouldn't have relied on them at all. According to Popverse, even Dynamite Entertainment looks like they'll suffer from any poor conduct Diamond's following now:

The comic book company behind titles featuring Disney's Stitch, Zootopia, and Gargoyles — as well as Warner Bros' Powerpuff Girls, Space Ghost, and Thundercats, as well as characters including Red Sonja, Barbarella, and The Boys — is in danger of running out of money... and it’s all because one-time leading pop culture distributor Diamond Comic Distributors allegedly hasn’t paid the more than one million dollar amount it owes the company

For the second time in three months, Dynamite Entertainment has filed legal papers with the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Maryland asking the court to expedite payment for money owed by Diamond. (The company filed for bankruptcy back in January 2025, and was purchased by two separate companies who split its assets in April.) Notably, the new filing, which the court received July 1, states that Diamond “has not communicated at all with Dynamite” over its debt following the earlier request, filed May 27.

“Dynamite is currently owed over $1 million for shipments made to the Debtor and Ad Populum LLC, a majority of which are administrative expenses,” the July 1 filing declared. That filing was asking to expedite an already scheduled hearing on July 16 because, as it explained, “Dynamite, a small company with less than 30 employees, does not have the funds to make payroll next week, if it is not promptly paid by the Debtor.”

This certainly isn't good either, and I have a feeling we may soon hear of Dynamite folding. Of course, some might not feel too sorry to see them go, recalling they once capitulated to the woke mob in the past several years, and there were some PC directions they'd taken at times too with Red Sonja. It could also be argued that relying on licensed merchandise adaptations not unlike IDW is not a great way to go. For now, time will tell what happens with Dynamite.

As for Diamond, they certainly have caused quite a bit of potential disaster for comics and game publishers alike, and it's for the best if they're leaving the industry now.

Labels: dc comics, history, indie publishers, licensed products, marvel comics, sales

40 years after the abortive original screen adaptation of Red Sonja, whom Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith created in the pages of their take on Conan in the Bronze Age (based on a character featured in one of Robert E. Howard's stories), Inverse is asking why Hollywood couldn't make a good adaptation of such a comic as much as Conan (even though the 2nd Conan movie at the time wasn't successful either, and was certainly the last for many years after), but unsurprisingly, can't seem to offer any convincing answers:

It took Hollywood a shockingly long time to realize that female-centered blockbusters could be both a worthwhile commercial and critical investment. Even as comic book adaptations took over, the heroines were left lacking for lead roles and decent opportunities from an industry that has never advocated for gender parity. It's not as though comic books were ever bereft of great characters to adapt, even in the pre-franchise days when everyone was chasing that sweet Star Wars cash. Forty years ago, one of the medium's greatest and most misunderstood women got her big screen debut, and it reminded us of just how easily Hollywood could stumble with female representation.

Do they realize that, without sturdy merit in the screenplay and acting, the films won't be considered worthwhile? Such a point is not clearly made here. So why do they think the interest will eventually wear off if filmmakers won't concentrate on curating serious talent? That wasn't the case with the original Sonja movie, and they at least admit as much:

Sadly, Red Sonja is pretty terrible. Where the Conan movies, particularly the first one directed by John Milius, felt genuinely epic, this seems dishearteningly half-baked. It’s a total drag full of miscasting, tonal dissonance, and plot holes. Usually, it’s more unintentionally funny than exciting. Poor Brigitte Nielsen, who was only 21 and had never acted before, looks gorgeous but flounders in front of the camera. She’s also saddled with the least interesting version of this character, one who is more victim than heroine and is frequently reliant on the support of men. Schwarzenegger even went so far as to call it the worst film he ever made (strong words for the star of Junior.)

From what I recall, the Conan sequel wasn't considered "epic", and certainly not in the way this column implies (the sequel film's screenplay, interestingly enough, is credited to Thomas and Gerry Conway). But then, as if that wasn't awkward enough, the writer goes on to imply that the chain-mail costume itself was wrong, though I suppose there is something to ponder in the original motivation written up for Sonja:

It doesn't help that they kept Sonja’s origin story from the comic books, wherein she is sexually assaulted. Her fighting skills are gifted on the condition that she never lie with a man unless he defeats her in fair combat, which, of course, means that Arnold has to battle her (at least it’s shown as a draw so she isn’t forced to submit.)

For many female fans, Red Sonja was a character to love in spite of the misogyny baked into her mythos. Yes, the cheesecake images of her chain-mail bikini were blatantly leering but there was fun to it, and a lot of readers were wearily used to fantasy narratives where women were sexually assaulted, either as a tragic backstory or to give the male hero motivation to slaughter the bad guy. As many readers of golden age SFF can attest to, none of this was rare, not in a genre where women were often depicted on the covers kneeling at men’s feet. But Sonja’s best stories let her rise above that. Sadly, the movie feels weighed down by seeming obligation to its assault origins that still has her play second fiddle to Arnie (and he’s not even in the film that much, because he didn’t want to do it!)

Let us be clear. If you think too many writers employ sexual assault as a motivation for a woman to battle evil, sure, it can be tasteless and dreadful as much as cliched. A premise where a woman's family is murdered by villains that doesn't involve sexual violence per se can work just as well, and IIRC, Batman and the Outsiders employed something like that in Katana's origin back in 1983. But if she's saying the chain-mail bikini itself was inherently wrong and there's nothing fun even for a woman in that, she's only turning to another form of cliche, the sex-negative feminist propaganda type. So, no woman considers bikinis a wonderful form of fashion, let alone a legitimate form of swimwear? Do tell us about it. Lost in the whole mishmash is whether the comics creation by Thomas and Windsor-Smith was even intended as a "feminist" statement per se to start with. And if it wasn't, why is it even such a big deal for these feminist writers to have Sonja adapted, let alone serve as a comics publication? On which note:

Red Sonja was rebooted in the comics when Dynamite took over the publishing rights. This version was a reincarnation of the original, and she received a much-acclaimed reinvention through the legendary comic book writer Gail Simone. Her Sonja was what fans had been crying out for: she was powerful, funny, empathetic, bisexual, often inebriated, but extremely good at her job. She’s still unapologetically the She-Devil with a Sword, slashing open enemies’ heads while clad in her chain-mail bikini, but this Sonja was also introspective and layered in ways that made her so much more than Conan with breasts. Simone has continued to write Sonja, including with her debut novel, Red Sonja: Consumed, published last year.

We’re getting a new, long-delayed Red Sonja movie at some point this year. Perhaps this one can break the curse for the character, but it’s such a wasted opportunity that she hasn’t already gotten her dues. It’s been all too easy to dismiss her as a pinup with a weapon, the lady Conan rather than her own being. High fantasy has long been a tough genre for Hollywood to do well, and combining it with a hyper-violent tone and sexual assault only further muddies the waters. It’s not impossible to make a fiercely feminist fable starring a woman in a chain mail bikini but Hollywood, never brilliant at developing leading heroines in any kind of clothing, barely seemed to try.

Honestly, I think there's questions to be asked in whether a story with a lady lead written by a woman has to rely upon jarring violence any more than what a man could write. And Simone's long proven overrated as a scribe. Why does it matter if Sonja's bisexual? At this point, when these news sites bring that up, it suggests more than they dig it because in their view, it could allude to man-hating. Is that a good example? Also lost in this whole discussion is that, while Marvel did subsequently launch a series for Red Sonja around 1976, it ran little more than 3 years, and was cancelled at the end of the 70s, with the lady lead only returning for a short miniseries in 1983 (an almost similar case was had with Kull the Conqueror, which was only intermittently published at the time). After that, to my knowledge, Marvel had the permit to publish an ongoing series for Sonja cancelled by the Howard estate in 1986, even as Conan comics continued under their labels until 1995.

Also, pretty funny how this column obscures Star Wars' use of princess Leia as a woman who could prove effective at gun combat, if anything, no matter her dress outfit. I guess it's because they'd have to bring up the 3rd movie, where she turned the tables on Jabba the Hut and throttled him with his own enslaving chain, huh? Weird how feminists had any issue with what point could be gleaned from that screeplay. Also, there have been science-fantasy movies in past history where sexual violence wasn't employed in the plot (does 1983's Krull count?), so whether those films were successful or not, why not give them some citation, and whether you think they were handled goodly or badly?

I'd already read what the new film based on Red Sonja could be like, and frankly, I'm not interested in seeing it, and much too weary at this point to care about yet another comics adaptation that could be far too clogged with heavy special effects anyway. And maybe the people writing these news columns would do well to ponder whether it's even worth it to spend what could be 20 dollars at the movie theater for something that'll probably be forgotten to the winds and sands of time pretty quickly by the end of the decade.

Labels: history, indie publishers, licensed products, marvel comics, misogyny and racism, msm propaganda, politics